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If you are having difficulty seeing this mail or images in it, you can view it in your Web browser. Volume 6, Issue 2      In This Issue:   He helped build the iPod; now he has built a rival   Details unfolding on Microsoft’s Origami   Is Mac OS as safe as ever?   Who’s who of Google hires   Microsoft boxes up Vista   Scenes from the culture clash   Mystery surrounds PC-to-mobile virus   They’ve heard ‘em all   CCIE: Talk about a stress test   IT moves in – With business   Best practices for mobile mania   Surviving process without going berserk   Security convergence   Making clear IT’s positive impact on the bottom line   Filling the void left by baby boomer techies   IT’s input on outsourcing   Make or break interview questions   Cursed by the “Perfect” colleague   Captain contingency   Slapping on a coat of silence Get ahead with a BlackBerry Solution Sure, you probably see our devices in people's hands all the time. But have you ever seen BlackBerry as a solution for your company before? Or maybe you thought it was only for larger businesses. Truth is, more and more businesses of all sizes are turning to a BlackBerry Solution to quickly gain a competitive advantage. >> Register to learn more Register for a chance to win 1 of 8 BlackBerry devices and find exclusive, limited-time BlackBerry offers! He helped build the iPod; now he has built a rival When Samsung, the consumer electronics giant, decided to mount a serious challenge to Apple Computer's iPod music player early last year, it turned to a little-known Silicon Valley software start-up with a cluttered one-room office tucked away in a Palo Alto, Calif., building above a mortgage title company. The result of that partnership is Samsung's newest Z5 portable MP3 player, which will appear on store shelves March 5. The software inside the player was forged at Iventor by a small team of programmers led by Paul Mercer, 38, a veteran Apple Macintosh software designer... Read the article.  Back to top Details unfolding on Microsoft's Origami As rumors unfurl about a new gadget upcoming from Microsoft, the company's Origami Project is starting to take shape as a very small tablet computer, one perhaps affordable enough to appeal to mainstream consumers. The concept, which Microsoft plans to detail next month, is built on top of the Windows XP operating system but aims to be a new kind of device, rather than a replacement for existing PCs, according to sources familiar with the effort. With a screen bigger than that of a handheld but smaller than a notebook PC screen, Origami devices won't fit in the pocket, but they'll make it into purses and even the smallest of backpacks, sources said. Microsoft's goal is to create a... Read the article.  Back to top Is Mac OS as safe as ever? Apple Computer fans have long loved to point out the safety of using Mac OS X, which has mostly been left alone by hackers. But the recent arrival of three threats has some asking: Is the software's charmed security life over? In the past two weeks, a pair of worms that target Mac OS X have been discovered, along with an easily exploitable, severe security flaw. The vulnerability exposes Mac users to risks that are more familiar to Windows owners: the installation of malicious code through a bad Web site or e-mail... Read the article.  Back to top Who's who of Google hires Over the last two years, Google has lured some of the best and brightest minds in technology and science to join the search giant's lava lamp and snack-filled offices. They include an award-winning physician, a pioneer of the Internet, the head of Amazon.com's A9 search unit, the former head of Microsoft's research group in China and an ex-top Windows architect. If there's a master plan in recruiting all this top talent beyond the obvious benefit of having all that intelligence under the same figurative roof, Google isn't saying. But the eclectic combination of world-class programmers, computer networking pioneers and even a famous epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox in India does offer insight into the strategic planning of Google's so-called leadership "triumvirate" of co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt... Read the article.  Back to top Microsoft boxes up Vista   Why Windows Vista Will Suck OK, maybe not dead bunnies through rusty tailpipes suck, but I, for one, don't see how Vista tomorrow equals the Linux desktop today. (DesktopLinux.com) Although it is still working to finish the code for Windows Vista, Microsoft has reached a decision on which versions of the operating system to offer. Microsoft has settled on six versions, including an Ultimate edition that will combine the best of the company's corporate and consumer features. The company is aiming to have all of the versions ready for launch in the second half of this year. "We're really trying to make sure we have the right set of offerings for different customers," said Barry Goffe, a director in Microsoft's Windows client unit... Read the article.  Back to top Scenes from the Culture Clash Companies are just now waking up to the havoc that the newest generation of workers is causing in their offices. Beverly Hills psychiatrist's office is an unlikely triage center for the mash-up of generations in the workforce. But Dr. Charles Sophy is seeing the casualties firsthand. Last year, when a 24-year-old salesman at a car dealership didn't get his yearly bonus because of poor performance, both of his parents showed up at the company's regional headquarters and sat outside the CEO's office, refusing to leave until they got a meeting. "Security had to come and escort them out," Sophy says. A 22-year-old pharmaceutical employee learned that he was not getting the promotion he had been eyeing. His boss told him he needed to work on his weaknesses first. The Harvard grad had excelled at everything he had ever done, so he was crushed by the news. He told his parents about the performance review, and they... Read the article.  Back to top Mystery surrounds PC-to-mobile virus A mystery is deepening around a report about the emergence of a virus that can pass from a PC to a mobile device, with some anti-virus vendors saying they have not seen the code to confirm it. The Mobile Antivirus Researchers Association (MARA) said Monday it anonymously received the code, named "Crossover." Microsoft, whose software the virus reportedly affects, said Wednesday it is investigating the reports but has not heard of any customer complaints. MARA officials were not immediately available to comment further. Anti-virus vendors said they will update their software to detect and remove the virus if they are allowed to analyze it. While vendors typically send virus samples to each other to update their products, MARA has not been forthcoming with a sample, said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. At the moment, the anti-virus community only has MARA's word that the virus exists, Cluley said... Read the article.  Back to top They've heard 'em all Mandy Andress was working in IT at a university library when she told a user that to help correct a computer problem, she'd have to see her cookies. "They brought me homemade cookies the next day," says Andress, a member of the Network World Lab Alliance and president of security consulting firm ArcSec Technologies... Read the article.  Back to top CCIE: Talk about a stress test Anthony Sequeira knows a little about stress. The 35-year-old network instructor from Tampa, Fla., once purposely stalled a single-engine plane and sent it into a tailspin five times in a row as part of his efforts to earn his pilot's license. He's also a world-class poker player. But nothing in his thrill-seeking exploits prepared him for the pressure of taking the Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert (CCIE) lab exam. The CCIE exam is "absolutely more stressful than doing loop-de-loops in a plane," Sequeira says. "With piloting, you conquer fear by eliminating the unknowns. The fear of the unknown is what you consistently face in the CCIE. They could throw a topic at you that you have no experience with. They did it to me all five times that I took the exam." Sequeira passed the lab exam in January, joining the ranks of 12,967 network engineers who have aced the grueling hands-on test. For most, passing the CCIE lab exam requires studying as many as 1,000 hours and maintaining a laser-like focus that leaves spouses, children and hobbies by the wayside. The lab exam also costs big bucks, with the purchase of workbooks, preparatory courses, racks of Cisco equipment, exam fees and travel reaching as high as $20,000. The lab exam is so difficult that it has taken on mythic proportions in the network industry... Read the article.  Back to top IT Moves In — With the Business Judith Spitz (left) and Mary Jane Johnston of Verizon Communications Inc. Image Credit: Giorgio Palmisano Collocating IT staffers with their business customers can be a win for your company. Judith Spitz's tech department had to make work run smoother and faster as Verizon Communications Inc. moved forward with its customer service initiative. Verizon wanted customers who called in orders or service requests to get great service quickly without talking to a rep, and IT had a major role in getting the job done. "Just delivering the system was not going to cross the finish line for us," Spitz says. "The way we operate had to be different." So Spitz, senior vice president of network systems at the New York-based company, put her IT workers right in the call centers, engineering centers and dispatch centers. That way, they could see firsthand how to improve business processes. "It probably saved our lives," says Mary Jane Johnston, who was then vice president for the fiber solutions center... Read the article.  Back to top Best Practices for Mobile Mania Have you ever walked into your users' offices and looked around at all the devices they have attached to the network? You'll probably see cell phones, MP3 players, digital cameras and other small handheld gadgets. For every device strewn across the desk or resting in its cradle, there is an accompanying application running somewhere on the computer desktop. There are also folders of songs, images and ring tones on the hard drive. So what are you going to do about it? While mobile devices seem innocuous -- after all, what harm can a cell phone do to your network? -- they can be detrimental to the overall safety and performance of your company... Read the article.  Back to top Surviving Process Without Going Berserk How to find the balance between domination and anarchy. Hadrian's Wall stands as a monument to the battle between process and freedom. Built by the Romans in northern Britain between 122 and 130 A.D., the 74-mile barrier marked the final frontier of the vast and powerful Roman Empire. On one side stood law and order. On the other, men painted themselves blue, screamed like banshees and went all but berserk in their fight to remain free. Likewise, process- and quality- focused methods like the Capability Maturity Model and ISO 9000 impose law and order within an organization. Studies have shown that the consistent use of processes increases repeatability, productivity and quality while decreasing project delivery time. But these same processes can appear as a wall to the business people who are pressured to get their ideas to market. The project team ends up on the battle line between the program management office (PMO) enforcing the procedures and the business people seeking to retain their freedom... Read the article.  Back to top Security Convergence Physical and information security are slowly beginning to come together. In many respects, the physical and information security groups that coexist within companies are as different from each other as J. Edgar Hoover and Bill Gates. Physical security staffs predominantly consist of former law enforcement officials who report to legal, compliance or risk management departments, whereas information or logical security departments typically have employees with technical backgrounds who are part of the IT organization. Physical security divisions tend to focus on the three G's -- guards, guns and gates -- while logical security groups usually concentrate on safeguarding information systems. There are a few companies where the two entities are structurally connected, but most are not. Still, a growing number of executives have recognized the value of having these groups collaborate to share tactics such as loss-prevention techniques for retailers or the use of card systems to restrict personnel access within a facility. According to a survey of 8,200 IT and security executives in 63 countries conducted in March and April of 2005 by PricewaterhouseCoopers and CIO magazine... Read the article.  Back to top Making Clear IT's Positive Impact on the Bottom Line Ask any CEO, CIO or chief financial officer whether IT shows up on the bottom line, and you'll hear a lot about how IT spending makes the bottom line smaller. But that's not what we mean when we ask that question. We're talking about making IT show up on the bottom line in a positive way. In other words, management wants to know what value they get from their IT spending. That's a measurement they can and should have. But, here's the problem: Measuring the value of IT in traditional financial terms is impractical. You end up having to make a lot of assumptions about the cost of doing things with and without IT support. These assumptions are difficult to substantiate. For example, consider how many more people, workspaces, furniture, equipment and supplies would be needed in the average corporation if processes weren't assisted by IT. And how do you value the speed, accuracy, reliability and volume that today's IT applications bring to the corporation?... Read the article.  Back to top Filling the void left by baby-boomer techies As an aging workforce retires, companies must cope with the inevitable brain drain. The big exodus is getting closer and closer. The baby boomers are about to retire in droves. Every day 10,000 baby boomers turn 50. In the next 10 years, 43 percent of the workforce will be eligible for retirement, while the next two generations are about 15 percent smaller. According to Taleo, a talent management consultancy, the United States will have a 10 million worker shortfall by 2010. Five hundred of the largest companies can expect to lose 50 percent of their senior management in the next five years. Forty percent of companies don’t have a leadership succession plan. To put it in real terms... Read the article.  Back to top IT's input on outsourcing For the good of the business, IT must have a stake in the business process outsourcing discussion. Few words strike fear into the hearts of IT pros like "outsourcing" and its closely related foreign cousin, "offshoring." For many, the "O" words are simply euphemisms for layoffs, an all-too-common occurrence. Worse, the corporate appetite for outsourcing continues to grow. Fear is a reasonable enough response, but not an effective survival tactic. For that, IT must take a different tack, something that gives techies control of their own destinies and real input into the decision-making process. In this new outsource-it-all world, IT needs a seat at the table, right alongside the business folks. Technical input has become particularly critical now that generic outsourcing has given way to the more strategic discipline of BPO (business process outsourcing). BPO breaks out specific chunks of the business and sends them elsewhere, to a specialized vendor who handles the software, the management, and even the staff required to keep the processes moving. This kind of outsourcing looks rosy enough on a CFO's whiteboard, but in the real world, ill-informed decisions about what to outsource and how to integrate outsourced operations into the remaining technology stack can wreak havoc. And that's where IT comes in... Read the article.  Back to top Make-or-Break Interview Mistakes To get on HR's good side, avoid certain behaviors. A major faux pas, and your name gets crossed off that list of potential candidates. Some people go into human resources thinking that it's like social work. Here's a news flash for anyone who thinks in those terms: If you're the kind of person who wants to adopt every stray kitten and advise every needy person you meet, you may want to find a different profession. The plain truth is that HR people have limits on how supportive they can be. They can help employees only to the extent that what's good for them is good for the company. They can help job candidates even less because the HR person's job is to evaluate applicants -- and eliminate from consideration those the company just doesn't need. A perfect example of the limits of HR compassion involves the job seeker who needs professional advice. Every HR person has stories about people who have come to interview in wildly unsuitable attire, or who have said something so outrageous within the first five minutes of the interview that the rest of the conversation was a waste. As much as they may joke after the fact, most HR people -- myself included -- dread these situations... Read the article.  Back to top Cursed by a "Perfect" Colleague Co-workers and bosses who blame everyone but themselves are a nightmare. But there may be something you can do. I was at a networking event the other evening, and got to chat with the panelists -- all successful businesspeople -- after their discussion. One of them was kidding another about a recent event where two of them had also spoken on a panel. "I couldn't believe what you said when that woman on the panel [a very well-known business and TV celebrity] was asked to share the biggest mistake she had ever made in her career," said one speaker. "She answered 'I've never made a mistake,' and you guffawed right in front of her!'" That was a well-timed guffaw. Such an authentic, instant reaction to an outrageous statement surely takes chutzpah, but can you imagine the nerve -- let's go ahead and call it hubris -- that it takes to say to an audience of experienced businesspeople, "I've never made a mistake"? Man, I wanted to have been there that night. I wish, wish, wish I had been sitting on that panel, so that I could have said to the poor woman, "How sad for you, to miss the valuable learning experiences that our failures provide." LIMITED VOCABULARY. We all know one of them, don't we -- those people who are Seldom in Error, and Never in Doubt? They just don't make mistakes. If all the evidence in the world says they made a misstep, they've got a ready answer to explain it away. It wasn't my mistake -- you must be confused -- that's not what I said -- and so on. It's bad to have one of these people for a co-worker. But it's really, really bad to have one for a boss. The can't-fail businessperson is the one who isn't responsible when something is late, missing, or incorrect. Your instructions weren't clear, someone else was responsible, and that wasn't her understanding... Read the article.  Back to top Captain Contingency MIT logistics expert Yossi Sheffi talks with CIO about what companies can do to recover quickly from almost any type of disaster. When the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed on Deutsche Bank's New York facility, the German banking giant lost its connection to the U.S. markets. Almost immediately, however, backup systems in Ireland kicked in, and Deutsche Bank went on to clear more than $300 billion in transactions that same day. After the September 11th attacks, and more recently hurricanes Katrina and Rita, companies such as Deutsche Bank have been able to bounce back because they planned for the unthinkable. Yossi Sheffi, director of MIT's Center for Transportation and Logistics, calls these organizations "resilient." In his recent book, The Resilient Enterprise, Sheffi says companies and government agencies need to take a systematic approach to disaster planning. (Read an excerpt from his book.) The list of things that can go wrong is endless, especially in this age of supply chains that stretch around the globe, leaving companies vulnerable to strikes, natural disasters and civil unrest far from home base. Companies need to start... Read the article.  Back to top Slapping on a coat of silence Company says its high-tech paint will block cell phone calls. Kozar_The_Malignant writes "Newsday is reporting on a new nanotube paint that is able to block cell phone signals on demand. The nanotubes are filled with copper, suspended in paint, and can be applied to the walls and ceiling of places such as concert halls, churches, and classrooms."... Read the article.  Back to top Forward to a Friend: Do you have a friend that would like to receive TechWatchsm? Perhaps you know a peer within your organization, or associate at a partner company that would benefit from applying to receive this publication. 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